Hasta Manana

I’ll keep this post short and sweet, but I just wanted to say ‘see you later’.

As you probably have picked up, this season has been a rough one. My season did not pan out even closely to the plan I had in December. Like I’ve said before (a lesson I just recently learned), life doesn’t always follow a training plan and my year has been full of ups and downs, all of which has disrupted my training. I went from training to my first full iron distance race, to training for a full aqua bike, to just racing sprints, to cutting my season short due to injury. Although I did recruit JC to start racing with me, my season was a classic case of biting off more than I can chew. I was ambitious about race choices during the off season and lacked the follow through during the season.

I’ve been fighting off a shoulder injury which has now lead to minor surgery scheduled in a few weeks. While the recovery from the surgery shouldn’t take more than 8 weeks, I’m calling it quits for this season. In addition to being finished with training for the year, I’m taking a hiatus from blogging. Actually I’m taking a hiatus from triathlon for the rest of the year.

Not to worry, I’ll be back next season, but until then I really need to get my head OUT of the game because it was never fully IN it. I just need time to take care of personal and work stuff and get back to the basics of enjoying training. So for the next few months I’m going to bike when I want, swim when I want and run when I want and not worry about maintaining ‘fitness’ for next season. I want to plan next season carefully and not get caught up in the excitement of endless possibilities of races and challenging distances.

So I wish all of you the BEST of luck with the rest of your season. I’ll be following you through your big races and know that you continue to inspire me and my training.

Until 2012, this is Maria signing off.

Over and out.